Which Factors Are Considered by Patients When Considering Total Joint Arthroplasty? A Discrete-choice Experiment

TKA and THA are major surgical procedures, and they are associated with the potential for serious, even life-threatening complications. Patients must weigh the risks of these complications against the benefits of surgery. However, little is known about the relative importance patients place on the potential complications of surgery compared with any potential benefit the procedures may achieve. Furthermore, patient preferences may often be discordant with surgeon preferences regarding the treatment decision-making process. A discrete-choice experiment (DCE) is a quantitative survey technique designed to elicit patient preferences by presenting patients with two or more hypothetical scenarios. Each scenario is composed of several attributes or factors, and the relative extent to which respondents prioritize these attributes can be quantified to assess preferences when making a decision, such as whether to pursue lower extremity arthroplasty.

In this DCE, we asked: (1) Which patient-related factors (such as pain and functional level) and surgery-related factors (such as the risk of infection, revision, or death) are influential in patients' decisions about whether to undergo lower extremity arthroplasty? (2) Which of these factors do patients emphasize the most when making this decision?

A DCE was designed with the following attributes: pain; physical function; return to work; and infection risks, reoperation, implant failure leading to premature revision, deep vein thrombosis, and mortality. From October 2021 to March 2022, we recruited all new patients to two arthroplasty surgeons' clinics who were older than 18 years and scheduled for a consultation for knee- or hip-related complaints who had no previous history of a primary TKA or THA. A total of 56% (292 of 517) of new patients met the inclusion criteria and were approached with the opportunity to complete the DCE. Among the cohort, 51% (150 of 292) of patients completed the DCE. Patients were administered the DCE, which consisted of 10 hypothetical scenarios that had the patient decide between a surgical and nonsurgical outcome, each consisting of varying levels of eight attributes (such as infection, reoperation, and ability to return to work). A subsequent demographic questionnaire followed this assessment. To answer our first research question about the patient-related and surgery-related factors that most influence patients' decisions to undergo lower extremity arthroplasty, we used a conditional logit regression to control for potentially confounding attributes from within the DCE and determine which variables shifted a patient's determination to pursue surgery. To answer our second question, about which of these factors received the greatest priority by patients, we compared the relevant importance of each factor, as determined by each factor's beta coefficient, against each other influential factor. A larger absolute value of beta coefficient reflects a relatively higher degree of importance placed on a variable compared with other variables within our study. Of the respondents, 57% (85 of 150) were women, and the mean age at the time of participation was 64 ± 10 years. Most respondents (95% [143 of 150]) were White. Regarding surgery, 38% (57 of 150) were considering THA, 59% (88 of 150) were considering TKA, and 3% (5 of 150) were considering both. Among the cohort, 49% (74 of 150) of patients reported their average pain level as severe, or 7 to 10 on a scale from 0 to 10, and 47% (71 of 150) reported having 50% of full physical function.

Variables that were influential to respondents when deciding on lower extremity total joint arthroplasty were improvement from severe pain to minimal pain (β coefficient: -0.59 [95% CI -0.72 to -0.46]; p < 0.01), improvement in physical function level from 50% to 100% (β: -0.80 [95% CI -0.9 to -0.7]; p < 0.01), ability to return to work versus inability to return (β: -0.38 [95% CI -0.48 to -0.28]; p < 0.01), and the surgery-related factor of risk of infection (β: -0.22 [95% CI -0.30 to -0.14]; p < 0.01). Improvement in physical function from 50% to 100% was the most important for patients making this decision because it had the largest absolute coefficient value of -0.80. To improve physical function from 50% to 100% and reduce pain from severe to minimal because of total joint arthroplasty, patients were willing to accept a hypothetical absolute (and not merely an incrementally increased) 37% and 27% risk of infection, respectively. When we stratified our analysis by respondents' preoperative pain levels, we identified that only patients with severe pain at the time of their appointment found the risk of infection influential in their decision-making process (β: -0.27 [95% CI -0.37 to -0.17]; p = 0.01) and were willing to accept a 24% risk of infection to improve their physical functioning from 50% to 100%.

Our study revealed that patients consider pain alleviation, physical function improvement, and infection risk to be the most important attributes when considering total joint arthroplasty. Patients with severe baseline pain demonstrated a willingness to take on a hypothetically high infection risk as a tradeoff for improved physical function or pain relief. Because patients seemed to prioritize postoperative physical function so highly in our study, it is especially important that surgeons customize their presentations about the likelihood an individual patient will achieve a substantial functional improvement as part of any office visit where arthroplasty is discussed. Future studies should focus on quantitatively assessing patients' understanding of surgical risks after a surgical consultation, especially in patients who may be the most risk tolerant.

Surgeons should be aware that patients with the most limited physical function and the highest baseline pain levels are more willing to accept the more potentially life-threatening and devastating risks that accompany total joint arthroplasty, specifically infection. The degree to which patients seemed to undervalue the harms of infection (based on our knowledge and perception of those harms) suggests that surgeons need to take particular care in explaining the degree to which a prosthetic joint infection can harm or kill patients who develop one.